Creating Gradient Maps With Fixel Recolor

Changing the color tone of an image to match another image is possible using Photoshop’s Match Color dialog, but it’s an inexact science. You can normally get better results by creating a custom Gradient Map; creating these maps is not straightforward, however, and requires no small degree of skill. Fixel Recolor is a $30 plugin that aims to simplify the process using machine learning.

Rather than recoloring an entire image, though, we’ll see how Fixel can be used within a photomontage environment, allowing you to make an imported layer match the tone of the background.

The Fixel panel

Fixel Recolor loads as a standard Photoshop panel, with simple controls. Clicking the Analyze button will create a palette based on the current image, arranging its hues by luminosity as swatches. You can set the number of colors in this palette – the default is 16 – and you can choose to analyze a file instead (for example, you could enter the URL of an image found online). The current palette can easily be stored as a preset for future use.

Matching foreground to background 

In this simple montage, an image of a woman has been superimposed on a landscape. Her tones clearly don’t match that of the background image, and the resulting montage looks unconvincing. When used within a single multi-layered image, you need to hide all the layers you don’t want to sample before clicking the Analyze button.

Applying the palette

There isn’t a button to apply the palette to an image – instead, curiously, you have to click the three dots above the current palette and choose Apply Color Grading from the pop-up menu. This will create a new Gradient Map Adjustment Layer, set to Soft Light mode at an opacity of 52%. To make this apply just to the woman layer, you need to make a Clipping Mask with that layer. The difference is a subtle one, but it has clearly brought her more in line with the background – look at the tone of her sweater to see how it more closely matches the green tones in the background.

Background to foreground

In some instances, it can be more productive to make the background match the foreground – especially as in this case, where the background is low contrast. To do this, hide the background and choose Analyze once more, before applying the color grading. The background is now strengthened and brought closer to the tones of the foreground layer.

Change the opacity

The default opacity of the Adjustment Layer is 52%. But you can increase this: here, setting it at 100% strengthens that somewhat washed-out background, producing a much closer match to the foreground image. You could also experiment with changing the Fixel Adjustment Layer to a different mode: Overlay will produce a slightly stronger result, Vivid Light will produce a much stronger version.

Better blending

In this example, a new tree (left) has been placed into this alpine landscape. Photographed in a different country under different lighting conditions, it stands out as mismatched to the background scene.

One-shot application

Applying the Fixel Recolor adjustment produces an instantly better result: the tree now blends far more effectively into the background, and looks as if it could well belong in that landscape.

Fixel Recolor can be used for a variety of purposes, applying special coloring effects to both landscapes and portraits to create a specific look. The ability to specify the number of colors means it’s much easier to create custom gradient maps; and because you can store them as presets, applying them with a single click is a breeze.

Steve Caplin is a freelance photomontage artist based in London, whose satirical illustrations have appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. He is the author of the best-selling How to Cheat in Photoshop, as well as 100% Photoshop, Art & Design in Photoshop and 3D Photoshop. He writes regularly for CreativePro and is an instructor at LinkedIn Learning. His YouTube channel 2 Minute Photoshop is a library of over 100 Photoshop tutorials, each just two minutes long, hosted at photoshop.london. When he’s not at his computer Steve builds improbable furniture, which can be seen at curieaux.com.
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